Microsoft’s Xbox One Costs $90 More to Build Than Sony’s PS4, Teardown Shows

With the recent release of two significant game consoles, research firm IHS has been working a little extra overtime these days. After dissecting Sony’s Playstation 4, the team gave Microsoft’s Xbox One the same treatment this week to get a peek at its electronic innards in order to estimate what it costs to make.

That's what happens when it's a HARDWARE company designing the system instead of a software company. They know how to best optimize for performance at an affordable price, and which components are most important for which functions. A software company doesn't have to worry as much because it's not really their function to run the software, the burden is on the hardware manufacturer.

I think it's more to do with MS priorities. They went with Esram because they wanted an entertainment box first & a gaming console second. Going with GDDR5 at the time would have cost them a lot due to the fact they wanted 8GB from the get-go. Sony was gaming first as they were fine with going with 4GB GDDR5 we can see this from the leaks & the late announcement of the consumer consoles getting 8GB as pointed out by MightyNoX Sony got lucky and was able to get 8GB for consumer consoles. If not we would have had 4GB GDDR5 with a more powerful CPU (Steamroller A.k.a Kaveri) based on the leaks.

are you xbox fans really trying to argue the facts. Benchmarks cleary show that the PS4 out performs the XBO, the developers have said it, the developers on Launch games have proved it with comparable launch games running higher fps, higher resolutions and better AA and Post processing effects!

Eurogamer has already done the draw downs on each.

All this proves is that MS's custom design, ESRAM and Kinect sensor drove up the price of an underpowered machine!... next!

Even just 4GB of GDDR5 with a superior APU would do the job. You make your own luck, hence 8GB instead of 4. Now allows more features quicker, but Sony will still continue to shrink all of their system's overheads with time.

[Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Securities, has estimated that Microsoft is likely to lose as much as $1 billion this year on the Xbox One, after accounting for research and development plus sales and marketing costs.]

@TheXD305 [ + 5m ago Well MS may loose $1 billion this year on X1 but Sony looses $60 on EVERY PS4 ]

Thats very simple, Proprietry Technology, the Cell was jointly made by Toshiba, Sony and IBM.

2. HDMI was expensive technology in 2005-2006.

3.bluray Diodes cost more at the time in 2006 as the first stand alone BD players were $1000-$1500.

4. the PS3 came with 4 USB ports, supported Bluetooth 2.0 which was new tech back then and supported the latest wifi technologies plus an Ethernet.

to compare, the 360 supported wifi through an external wifi adapter, used wireless controllers instead of more expensive Bluetooth, and used a DVD drive INSTEAD of bu ray, ONLY initially came with an ethernet cable, only came with component cables instead of an HDMI port and its CPU was not a proprietary tech.

Also, the GPU in the PS3 was more powerful than the 360. What crippled it was the fact that the memory pool was split, 256mb was set apart of the CPU and even less was set apart for the GPU

Because they decided to stick 32 MB of ram on the APU die. I can see the trail of decisions that led them here:

1) We need 8GB of RAM because we're going to have all kinds of stuff running at the same time, so we'll have to use DRAM. It's cheap. 2) DRAM is also slow, so we'll use a local EDRAM cache in the APU to cache the framebuffer. That will get us most of the speed back for the most-used case. 3) Oh, if we use EDRAM, we have to do a multi-chip package, or we need to have DRAM on the die, which we can't move between chip foundries easily. We don't like that. 4) Okay, we'll just use SRAM on die, instead of DRAM. 5) Each bit uses 6 transistors, and there are 8 bits per byte, times 32 MB, is 1610612736 transistors. Errrr. Sure.

So, 1.6 BILLION transistors on the XBox One APU are reserved for just the ESRAM. 32% of the available transistors on the APU are used for a single dumb cache. They suck power, they generate heat, they decrease yield, and they increase the die size which decreases the number of dies per wafer, and the wafer is a fixed cost.

THAT is why the XBox APU is more expensive and also less powerful than the PS4 APU.

You do get alot more with the Xbox One i have played both.Look at Ryse the best looking game period right now and blows away everything the PS4 has or has shown so far.I played Battlefield 4 on both systems and the Xbox One version is better by a long shot.Its brighter visuals and more detailed.While the PS4 version is dull looking and not detailed at all.Yea Xbox One yea just get more out of the system

What's the big deal they are making a $28 dollar profit right off the bat. They in it for the long run every year the parts will get cheaper so the profit will grow. They want have to dig themselves out of a hole right at launch. Why is everything thing on here is always seen as a bad thing. The one thing you can say about Microsoft is that they make money.

Does Diehard Xbox fans incompetence knows no bounds?? the way i read some comments here, this is what it sums up "Xbone CPU is more expensive than PS4's so therefore it's more powerful" Wow, you guys, will find anything advantageous from the Xbone to make it look more superior to PS4. you failed at the ram, then the GPU and now CPU. whats next? Xbone has more faster wifi card??. Sorry but now, Xbone's CPU is not better than PS4's. it could be equal but not better. give me proof and link.

Wow, so Sony are only paying $18 more for a far more superior GPU/memory subsystem.

I bet Microsoft are kicking themselves for committing to DDR3 and the ESRAM it requires, imagine if they had gone with GDDR5 like Sony and (without any need for ESRAM) included the same class of GPU as PS4, the Xbox One would have been equally as powerful as PS4 and price pretty much the same as it is now.

how much it cost to make does not matter im sure its kinect obviously .....ps3 cost twice that of the 360 because blu ray ! I am a sony fan but that price was not worth it untill later in ps3 life when blu ray actually won over hd dvd , so it goes to show one thing can jack a price up the ass and its kinect aka not worth it

@Unborn - I paid £425 for my launch PS3 and have never felt I paid over the odds for it. The blu ray drive alone was worth the initial outlay.

People complain about the initial launch games available, but I was more than happy with motorstorm and Resistance to play, then COD (before it turned into the farce it is now) and uncharted dropped for it.

7 years later, I feel I got more than my moneys worth, which is why I'll be firing up my PS4 tomorrow

In fact that report is way more believable, than this one. It is the first one of its kind that I have seen that really admits how much profit the companies are making.

Any report saying they are losing money is a marketing favor if you ask me. These companies are not doing the razor/blade business model. Because the even the razor blade companies NEVER actually did that. They just convinced people that they where losing money.

No one is saying they beat PC specs. But try playing a modern PC/360/PS3 multiplat game on a graphics card from 2005/6. Even a top of the line $600 card of that era won't be able to run a modern game well if at all. And 360/PS3 GPUs are not even high end for the time. Optimization and dedicated hardware goes a long ways.

I kinda lost interest on one item the headset..10 bucks..ah no..more like 2 bucks....they are guessing completely on most of the innards based on market standards when that is not the case of either the ps4 or the x1.